Climate sciences articles within Nature Communications

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  • Article
    | Open Access

    Antarctic krill are known to be important to the carbon cycle, but the exact contribution is not known. Here the authors show that krill moulting is a major vector of carbon export in the Southern Ocean, together with krill faecal pellets accounting for almost 90% of annual particulate organic carbon flux.

    • C. Manno
    • , S. Fielding
    •  & G. A. Tarling

  • Article
    | Open Access

    This study investigates flood hazards of the Brahmaputra River, Bangladesh. Based on a tree ring reconstruction of seasonal river discharge, climate modelling, and historic documentation of flood events, the authors suggest flood hazard risk is underestimated by ~24–38% in the present day compared to the past 700 years.

    • Mukund P. Rao
    • , Edward R. Cook
    •  & Peter J. Webster

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Iceberg melting releases large volumes of freshwater in fjords, yet the impact on oceanic heat delivery to tidewater glaciers is unknown. Here the authors show that iceberg melting invigorates fjord circulation in a large, iceberg-congested fjord, thereby increasing oceanic heat delivery to its tidewater glaciers.

    • B. J. Davison
    • , T. R. Cowton
    •  & A. J. Sole

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Compound climate events such as floods and droughts together can cause severe socio-economic impacts. Here, the authors analyse global hazard pairs from 1980–2014 and find global hotspots for the occurrence of compound events.

    • Nina N. Ridder
    • , Andy J. Pitman
    •  & Jakob Zscheischler

  • Article
    | Open Access

    The Greenland Ice Sheet is the largest land ice contributor to sea level rise and understanding the long-term glacier response to external forcing is key to improved projections. Here the authors show Greenland’s three largest outlet glaciers will likely exceed current worst-case scenario

    • Shfaqat A. Khan
    • , Anders A. Bjørk
    •  & Toni Schenk

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Warming in the high latitudes is expected to stimulate soil organic matter decomposition which leads to enhanced carbon emissions. Here, the authors show that short-term experiments do not capture the complexity of vegetation dynamics in the Arctic and might thus not provide a full picture of long term processes.

    • Nicholas J. Bouskill
    • , William J. Riley
    •  & Robert F. Grant

  • Comment
    | Open Access

    Early studies of weather, seasonality, and environmental influences on COVID-19 have yielded inconsistent and confusing results. To provide policy-makers and the public with meaningful and actionable environmentally-informed COVID-19 risk estimates, the research community must meet robust methodological and communication standards.

    • Benjamin F. Zaitchik
    • , Neville Sweijd
    •  & Xavier Rodó

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Many climate models failed to reproduce the eastern Pacific cooling that has been linked to slower warming in the early 20th century. Here, the authors present a feedback mechanism between the tropical Pacific and the Atlantic which contributes to this bias as it further dampens the Pacific cooling response in models.

    • Chen Li
    • , Dietmar Dommenget
    •  & Shayne McGregor

  • Perspective
    | Open Access

    Marine microbial activities fuel biogeochemical cycles that impact the climate, but global models do not account for the myriad physiological processes that microbes perform. Here the authors argue for a model framework that reinterprets the ocean as physics coupled to biologically-driven redox chemistry.

    • Emily J. Zakem
    • , Martin F. Polz
    •  & Michael J. Follows

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Dust deposition brings iron that fuels ocean productivity, a connection impacting climate over geological time. Here the authors use sediment cores to show that in contrast to dynamics today, during the last glacial maximum westerly winds shuttled dust from Australia and South America around Antarctica and into the South Pacific.

    • Torben Struve
    • , Katharina Pahnke
    •  & Gisela Winckler

  • Article
    | Open Access

    The fate of the carbon locked away in soil is uncertain, and there are vast differences between models. Here the authors apply observational, spatio-temporal constraints on carbon turnover projections and find that uncertainty in estimations of carbon dynamics are reduced by 50%.

    • Rebecca M. Varney
    • , Sarah E. Chadburn
    •  & Peter M. Cox

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Solar insolation is not equally distributed on the Earth’s surface and such imbalances influence the atmospheric circulation. Here, the authors show that latitudinal insolation gradients synchronized the hydroclimate in the Northern mid-latitudes and the African and South American Monsoons throughout the Holocene.

    • Michael Deininger
    • , Frank McDermott
    •  & Denis Scholz

  • Article
    | Open Access

    The disintegration of cryosphere elements such as the Arctic summer sea ice, mountain glaciers, Greenland and West Antarctica is associated with temperature and radiative feedbacks. In this work, the authors quantify these feedbacks and find an additional global warming of 0.43°C.

    • Nico Wunderling
    • , Matteo Willeit
    •  & Ricarda Winkelmann

  • Perspective
    | Open Access

    Reducing soil degradation and improving soil management could make an important contribute to climate change mitigation. Here the authors discuss opportunities and challenges towards implementing a global climate mitigation strategy focused on carbon sequestration in agricultural soils, and propose a framework for guiding region- and soil-specific management options.

    • W. Amelung
    • , D. Bossio
    •  & A. Chabbi

  • Article
    | Open Access

    How the El Niño Southern Oscillation depends on the background conditions is not well known. Here, the authors present individual foraminifera distributions which show that central Pacific variability is related to the warmth and depth of the thermocline across varying climate background conditions over the past ~285,000 years.

    • Gerald T. Rustic
    • , Pratigya J. Polissar
    •  & Sarah M. White

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Dense water from the Nordic Seas sustains the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation, yet the upstream pathways are not fully known. Here, the authors provide evidence of a deep current between Iceland and the Faroe Islands, which supplies 50% of the transport through the Faroe Bank Channel overflow.

    • Stefanie Semper
    • , Robert S. Pickart
    •  & Bogi Hansen

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Climate action from local actors is vital in achieving nationally determined contributions under the Paris Agreement. Here the authors show that existing commitments from U.S. states, cities and business could reduce emissions 25% below 2005 levels by 2030, with expanded subnational action reducing emissions by 37% and federal action by up to 49%.

    • Nathan E. Hultman
    • , Leon Clarke
    •  & John O’Neill

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Marine records indicate a greenhouse to icehouse climate transition at ~34 million years ago, but how the climate changed within continental interiors at this time is less well known. Here, the authors show an orbital climate response shift with aridification on the northeastern Tibetan Plateau during this time.

    • Hong Ao
    • , Guillaume Dupont-Nivet
    •  & Zhisheng An

  • Article
    | Open Access

    China issued the Dual Credit policy to improve vehicle efficiency and accelerate new energy vehicle adoption. Here the authors show that the total Greenhouse gas emissions (GHGs) of the Chinese passenger vehicle fleet are expected to peak in 2032 and a significant reduction in GHG emissions is possible by optimizing the Dual Credit policy.

    • Xin He
    • , Shiqi Ou
    •  & Michael Wang

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Monsoon systems have strong impacts on precipitation and food security over large areas of the world. Here, the authors show that plant responses to rising CO2 concentrations in the atmosphere play a key role in modulating seasonal rainfall and water resources over global land monsoon regions.

    • Jiangpeng Cui
    • , Shilong Piao
    •  & Gabriel J. Kooperman

  • Article
    | Open Access

    The COVID-19 pandemic has stopped many human activities, which has had significant impact on emissions of greenhouse gases. Here, the authors present daily estimates of country-level CO2 emissions for different economic sectors and show that there has been a 8.8% decrease in global CO2 emissions in the first half of 2020.

    • Zhu Liu
    • , Philippe Ciais
    •  & Hans Joachim Schellnhuber

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Unconventional oil and gas production has increased drastically in the US, but its environmental impacts are not well known. Here, the authors show that these wells can be associated with elevated levels of airborne particle radioactivity in downwind locations.

    • Longxiang Li
    • , Annelise J. Blomberg
    •  & Petros Koutrakis

  • Article
    | Open Access

    The Si cycle is important to ocean productivity and nutrient cycling, however there are uncertainties in global budgets. Here the authors use a multi-isotope approach on seafloor sediments and pore fluids, finding that an unappreciated source of Si to the ocean is the degradation of seafloor serpentinites.

    • Sonja Geilert
    • , Patricia Grasse
    •  & Catriona D. Menzies

  • Article
    | Open Access

    How the abrupt warming events recorded in Greenland ice cores during the last glacial cycle have influenced the tropical climate is not well known. Here the authors present new lake sediment data from the Peruvian Andes that shows that these events resulted in rapid glacier retreat and large reductions in lake level.

    • Arielle Woods
    • , Donald T. Rodbell
    •  & Joseph S. Stoner

  • Article
    | Open Access

    This study investigates the effect of changing sea level on deep sea gas emissions in the Arctic. The results show that small decreases in sea-level favors gas release. This implies that sea-level rise may partially counterbalance the effect of warming oceans on gas emissions overall.

    • Nabil Sultan
    • , Andreia Plaza-Faverola
    •  & Jochen Knies

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Few palaeoclimate archives beyond the polar regions preserve continuous and datable paleotemperature proxy time series over multiple glacial-interglacial cycles. Here, the authors show that Mg concentrations in a subaqueous speleothem from an Italian cave track regional sea-surface temperatures over the last 350,000 years.

    • Russell Drysdale
    • , Isabelle Couchoud
    •  & Jon Woodhead

  • Article
    | Open Access

    The authors estimate the damages associated with global temperature variability. They find that variability in temperature leads to substantial uncertainty about damages, which imposes costs equivalent to a large fraction of annual consumption today.

    • Raphael Calel
    • , Sandra C. Chapman
    •  & Nicholas W. Watkins

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Climate warming is advancing spring leaf unfolding, but it is also reducing the cold periods that many trees require to break winter dormancy. Here, the authors show that 7 of 12 current chilling models fail to account for the correct relationship between chilling accumulation and heat requirement, leading to substantial overestimates of the advance of spring phenology under climate change.

    • Huanjiong Wang
    • , Chaoyang Wu
    •  & Quansheng Ge

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Carbon stored in the Arctic is threatened by climate change, but models do not capture the local-scale heterogeneity that influences carbon dynamics. Here the authors refine tundra models to account for heterogeneity, finding improved projections and decreased uncertainty in assessing the fate of carbon.

    • M. J. Lara
    • , A. D. McGuire
    •  & S. D. Wullschleger

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Ice nucleating particles impact the global climate by altering cloud formation and properties, but the sources of these emissions are not completely characterized. Here, the authors show that secondary organic aerosols formed from the oxidation of organic gases in the atmosphere can be a source of ice nucleating particles.

    • Martin J. Wolf
    • , Yue Zhang
    •  & Daniel J. Cziczo

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Which vapors are responsible for new particle formation in the Arctic is largely unknown. Here, the authors show that the formation of new particles at the central Arctic Ocean is mainly driven by iodic acid and that particles smaller than 30 nm in diameter can activate as cloud condensation nuclei.

    • Andrea Baccarini
    • , Linn Karlsson
    •  & Julia Schmale

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Dryness stresses vegetation and can lead to declines in productivity, increased emission of carbon, and plant mortality, but the drivers of this stress remain unclear. Here the authors show that soil moisture plays a dominant role relative to atmospheric water demand over most global land vegetated areas.

    • Laibao Liu
    • , Lukas Gudmundsson
    •  & Sonia I. Seneviratne

  • Article
    | Open Access

    A significant part of the subpolar North Atlantic has warmed less over the past century than the rest of the global ocean, a feature called the North Atlantic warming hole. Here, the authors show that this anomaly can be explained by remote atmospheric forcing from the rapidly warming Indian Ocean.

    • Shineng Hu
    •  & Alexey V. Fedorov

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Exposure to extreme events is a major concern in coastal regions where human populations and stressed ecosystems are at risk to such phenomena. Here the authors show a marine heatwave on the continental shelf resulted from a novel set of compounding effects due to a tropical storm followed by an atmospheric heatwave.

    • B. Dzwonkowski
    • , J. Coogan
    •  & T. Lee

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Satellites provide clear evidence of greening trends in the Arctic, but high-resolution pan-Arctic quantification of these trends is lacking. Here the authors analyse high-resolution Landsat data to show widespread greening in the Arctic, and find that greening trends are linked to summer warming overall but not always locally.

    • Logan T. Berner
    • , Richard Massey
    •  & Scott J. Goetz

  • Article
    | Open Access

    The intermittency of solar resources is one of the primary challenges for the large-scale integration of the renewable energy. Here Yin et al. used satellite data and climate model outputs to evaluate the geographic patterns of future solar power reliability, highlighting the tradeoff between the maximum potential power and the power reliability.

    • Jun Yin
    • , Annalisa Molini
    •  & Amilcare Porporato

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Proxy reconstructions show a decreasing trend from the Middle to Late Holocene, which conflicts with model results showing an increasing trend. Statistical analysis of model output shows that these conflicting results originate from two distinct modes of variability, which dominate at different regions and times.

    • Jürgen Bader
    • , Johann Jungclaus
    •  & Martin Claussen

  • Article
    | Open Access

    The early Eocene was characterized by exceptionally high global temperatures and no polar ice. Here, clumped isotope paleothermometry of glendonite calcite from the Danish Basin shows that these were formed in waters below 5 °C, indicating that regionalised cool episodes punctuated the background warmth of the early Eocene.

    • Madeleine L. Vickers
    • , Sabine K. Lengger
    •  & Christoph Korte

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Permafrost locks away the largest reservoir of mercury on the planet, but climate warming threatens to thaw these systems. Here the authors use models to show that unconstrained fossil fuel burning will dramatically increase the amount of mercury released into future ecosystems.

    • Kevin Schaefer
    • , Yasin Elshorbany
    •  & Elsie M. Sunderland

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Extreme events high up in the winter stratosphere are known to influence our weather and their predictability has potential to improve seasonal weather forecasts. Here, the authors examine factors that influence their generation and highlight a previously unrecognised sensitivity to the upper equatorial stratosphere.

    • L. J. Gray
    • , M. J. Brown
    •  & J. Anstey

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Africa houses approximately one third of the global cattle, sheep and goat population. Here the authors show that manure accumulation in livestock enclosures can emit significant quantities of the greenhouse gas N2O for decades after abandonment, totaling 5% of continental anthropogenic N2O emissions.

    • Klaus Butterbach-Bahl
    • , Gretchen Gettel
    •  & Lutz Merbold

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Svalbard glaciers are among the lowest ice masses in the Arctic, with a peak in glacier area below 450 m elevation. Using a high-resolution climate model, here the authors show that a modest warming in the mid-1980s propagated meltwater runoff above the glacier area peak, amplifying Svalbard mass loss from all elevations.

    • Brice Noël
    • , C. L. Jakobs
    •  & M. R. van den Broeke

  • Article
    | Open Access

    The impacts of climate change on agricultural productivity remain debated. Here, the authors present new evidence for the magnitude and causes of U.S. crop insurance losses, using a database of production risk from 1989–2014 across 1733 counties for corn and 1632 counties for soybeans, and find that crop production risk will increase in response to warmer temperatures.

    • Edward D. Perry
    • , Jisang Yu
    •  & Jesse Tack

  • Article
    | Open Access

    The methane emissions from natural gas vehicles (NGVs) are unclear. Here the authors report high methane emissions from heavy-duty NGVs, and by using a scenario analysis show that strictly implementing the upcoming China VI standard could reduce GHG emissions by 509 Mt CO2eq for 2020-2030.

    • Da Pan
    • , Lei Tao
    •  & Mark A. Zondlo

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